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Mar 29, 2010

Conservation Summit shows Obama to be different than Prior Administration

We sadly are unfamiliar with zoning and private property rights law. But we are very diligent in our belief that Nature rarely has a fair seat at any table where Man is deciding how land which Nature inhabits is to be used.

We believe the only fair short term process is to cordon off large tracts of land for use by Nature only. If Man must be allowed to trespass on the land as a hunter, fisher, or hiker/camper in order to provide a stream of income to maintain the land then we guess this must be done but it should be with the smallest impact imaginable.

Hopefully a line of thought similar to ours will guide the meeting planned below by the President.

Obama hopes to balance industry, environment with summit on caring for land “We strive to learn about the smart, creative community efforts under way throughout the country to conserve our outdoor spaces.“ -Nancy Sutley, White House Council on Environmental Quality

-Voicing concerns that Americans are losing their connection with nature -and that natural areas are falling victim to sprawl and pollution -the White House will invite hundreds of hunters, anglers, environmentalists and other champions of the outdoors to Washington next month for a conservation summit.

Administration officials said Friday that the White House Conference on America's Great Outdoors, on April 16, will focus on how to conserve the land with local leadership, as opposed to a heavy federal government role, administration officials said Friday.

The goal is to bring together cities, states, tribes and nongovernment organizations working on conservation efforts, and to encourage families to spend more time outdoors, administration officials said.

Too many of “the farms, ranches and forests that we take great pride in, and the neighborhood parks, trails and fields where we spend memorable time with our families and friends ... are disappearing,“ said Nancy Sutley , chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality . “In launching this conversation, we strive to learn about the smart, creative community efforts under way throughout the country to conserve our outdoor spaces.“

Presidential conservation summits date to the days of Theodore Roosevelt, and most recently were held by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W . Bush. President Barack Obama, like many of his predecessors, is struggling to balance competing pressures on public land from hunters and anglers, environmental groups and industry.

Oil and gas companies have criticized Obama's Interior Department for revoking some drilling leases -many of them near national parks -issued under Bush.Congressional Republicans accused Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in recent months of pushing to “lock up“ swaths of federal land in the West, after the release of an Interior document suggesting sites for new national monuments.

Salazar has defended the revocations and dismissed the monument document as an early draft, assuring Western lawmakers that the administration will not declare any new monuments without public input.

Recently, sport fishing groups have seized on a rumor that the administration could be preparing restrictions on recreational fishing, which the White House and fisheries officials deny emphatically .

Environmentalists, while largely pleased with the administration's public lands stances, have criticized Obama for not going far enough to block mountaintop coal mining.